NY Times: "Voter Insurrection Turns Mainstream, Creating New Rules"

The mainstream is finally catching on:

Word has reached Washington that an anti-incumbent tsunami is roaring its way, and frightened politicians are already trying, sometimes comically, to put some distance between themselves and the tide. “My gosh, these people in Washington are running the country right into the ground,” Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, lamented this week, despite having lived and worked there for the last 34 years.

But to suggest that this week’s primaries are just part of the latest revolt against incumbency, brought on by pervasive economic angst, is to miss some deeper trends in the electorate that are more consequential — trends that have brought us to an unprecedented disconnect between, on one side, the traditional shapers of our politics in Washington and, on the other, the voters who actually make the choices.

The old laws of politics have been losing their relevance as attitudes and technology evolve, creating a kind of endemic instability that probably is not going away just because housing prices rebound. Nor is that instability any longer driven only by ideological mini-movements like MoveOn.org or the tea parties, as some commentators suggest. Voter insurrection has gone as mainstream as Miley Cyrus, and to the extent that the parties in Washington take comfort in the false notion that all this chaos is fleeting, they will fail to internalize the more enduring lessons of Tuesday’s elections.

Congressman Mark Souder Forced to Step Down After Sex Scandal

Another career incumbent (CRUM), Mark Souder, bites the dust. Souder probably thought he could get away with anything. But he got caught. It's like a career criminal - they can't help themselves. The only way to stop them is by forcing them out of office:

Republicans are scrambling to hold onto Rep. Mark Souder's seat following the evangelical Christian's decision to resign over an extramarital affair with a staffer.

...The confession by Souder - an evangelical Christian who promoted abstinence education and was known for his outspoken views on religion - stunned some voters in his district.

"I just think it's a crying shame," said Jean Tarner, who owns the Huntington Street Bar in downtown Syracuse. "He's supposed to be setting the values for the youth. It's just too bad."

This video is hysterical:

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CNN Video: "The Year of the Anti-Incumbent?"

Voters back anti-DC, Anti-establishment Candidates

This our chance to finally take back our government. Are you going to take advantage of the opportunity or sit by and watch the same old game escape retribution?

With the electorate's intense anger reverberating across the country, this is all but certain: It's an anti-Washington, anti-establishment year. And candidates with ties to either better beware.

Any doubt about just how toxic the political environment is for congressional incumbents and candidates hand-picked by national Republican and Democratic leaders disappeared late Tuesday, when voters fired Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, forced Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a run-off in Arkansas and chose tea party darling Rand Paul to be the GOP nominee in Kentucky's Senate race.

"People just aren't very happy," Ira Robbins, 61, said in Allentown, Pa.

With anyone linked to power, it seems.

Taken together, the outcomes of primaries in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Kentucky—following voter rejections of GOP Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah and Democratic Rep. Alan Mollohan in West Virginia—provided further evidence that voters are in the mood to choose outsiders over insiders.

Neither party benefited last night. They are both the parties of incumbency:

The outcomes of both contests, along with a Democratic primary in Arkansas that pushed Senator Blanche Lincoln into a runoff election in June, illustrated anew the serious threats both parties face from candidates who are able to portray themselves as outsiders and eager to shake up the system.

“I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words,” Mr. Paul said in his victory speech in Bowling Green, Ky. “We have come to take our government back.”

...The results were sobering for both parties, amounting to a rejection of candidates selected and backed by leaders in Washington who found themselves out of step with their electorates.

Republicans and Democrats alike are now left to learn the lessons from the frustration being expressed by voters, and to unify behind nominees who face daunting general election campaigns.

On the Democratic side, organized labor, which invested millions into the races in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, did not achieve a victory in either state. On the right, another show of Tea Party strength left the Republican party leadership scrambling to reconnect with the grassroots.

Congress: US repeated 9/11 Slips in Christmas Plot

We can thank that same Congress for this massive failure. You think incumbency might have something to do with it? They are too busy raising funds for their next election:

Despite a top-to-bottom overhaul of the intelligence community after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the nation's security system showed some of the same failures when it allowed a would-be bomber to slip aboard an airliner, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report at times contradicted the Obama administration's assertion that the nearly catastrophic Christmas Day bombing attempt was unlike 9/11 because it represented a failure to understand intelligence, not a failure to collect and understand it.

The congressional review is more stark than the Obama administration's report. It lays much of the blame at the feet of the National Counterterrorism Center, which Congress created to be the primary agency in charge of analyzing terrorism intelligence.

Top Strategists Quit McCain Race

Sounds a like a campaign in disarray. The serial incumbent McCain is running scared. With your help we can term-inate him on June 1st.:

Sen. John McCain's re-election bid lost its campaign manager and another veteran Republican official, part of a shake-up for the lawmaker from Arizona who is locked in a tight primary race with radio host and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

The pair of veteran GOP hands — who started before Mr. Hayworth entered the race — will work instead on the Republican National Committee's effort in Arizona. Campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said neither Shiree Verdone nor Mike Hellon, a former Arizona GOP chairman, had been fired.

"Voters may be fed up with Congressional Pork"

Pork is the mother's milk of incumbency:

Is America losing its taste for bacon?

When it comes to the congressional variety, members of the powerful appropriations committees are finding that holding the nation's purse strings — and the power the positions afford in doling out pork-barrel projects back home — are no guarantee these days for re-election.

Six of the 13 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee up for re-election this year have announced they'll retire or have lost a primary challenge. A seventh, Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, is trailing challenger Rep. Joe Sestak in the polls heading to Tuesday's primary. The committee has 30 total members.

...A public backlash against pet projects, often called earmarks, wasn't the sole reason that forced these lawmakers from office. But unlike past election seasons, sitting on an appropriations committee isn't enough to save a lawmaker's political skin.

"Being on the appropriations committees isn't the advantage it was in past election cycles, in part because there's an anti-incumbent attitude," said David Wasserman, who covers House races for the Cook Political Report. "But it's probably never the single reason an incumbent falls short."

The anti-earmark wave seems to have has caught many lawmakers off guard on Capitol Hill, where membership to the House and Senate "approps" committees is still considered a desirable and powerful privilege.

"They expect to be thanked" for pet projects back home, said Mike Connolly, a spokesman with the Club for Growth, a conservative group that pushes for limited government spending. But "the American people are figuring out that, while they're getting a little bit for their state, they also know that they're paying for the stuff in the other 49 [states], too."